Cure
by VictoryCrush
Summary: Rex's nanites are out of commission for twenty four hours, which of course means that Van Kleiss tries to make a comeback. Rated T for violence.


**"CURE"**

**Chapter One: EMP **

**by VictoryCrush**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Generator Rex. Man of Action does. Man of Action also has a really cool pen name, which I wish I'd thought of first.**

* * *

_"I'm gonna fight 'em off_

_A seven nation army couldn't hold me back._

_They're gonna rip it off_

_Taking their time right behind my back."_

-"Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes

* * *

After the world-wide Cure Event, Providence wasn't spread as thin as it was before. EVO's used to outnumber them ten-to-one. Now there were only a handful: Van Kleiss' mysteriously absent gang, for starters. Also Black Knight and her ex-boss goons. If there were any more, they were hiding deep underground.

Rex Salazar missed the thrill sometimes.

He blasted out of the Keep like a missile, hitting the pavement hard enough to spray loose rocks in all directions. A few pinged off the side of the weirdo-machine that was crawling its way towards the City National Bank at the block corner. A box of white on four spider-like legs. Rex built a bike from his legs and zoomed alongside it, grazing the side carriage with his fingertips, talking nanite.

_Hey little guys, mind doing something for me?_

Streaks of geometric blue veined across the metal siding, and a distinctly bad clunk came from the engines.

The machine froze in place with a pathetic, mechanical whine.

Rex jumped onto the sidewalk as the bike crumbled from his frame, and he peeled his goggles back, squinting.

"Rex to base: _señor_ Box-Spider's not going anywhere."

"_Affirmative_," came Six's voice through the earpiece. "_Providence is sending the retrieval team now. ETA: five minutes. Good work, Rex_."

"If you can call this work!" Rex waved a hand in the air. "I barely touched the guy! Got anything harder for me to do?"

"_This _was_ the hardest thing to do_," Six said.

"What's the next hardest thing?"

"Filthy EVO!"

From the manhole on top of the Box-Spider came a large, burly woman with frizzy gray hair and way too many piercings on her face. She lobbed a chunk of the spider's frame at Rex's head, which he sidestepped with surprise.

"Huh, Six. Looks like Miss Muffet isn't gonna be scared away this time."

The second chunk grazed his cheek, and he threw up his Smack Hands, shielding himself while Six sighed in his earpiece.

"_She has been... unusually active this past week."_

"And probably hitting the gym," agreed Rex. A steady barrage of clunks reverberated through his hands. "Geez! Lady! Chill out, will you?"

The pelting chunks of metal stopped for a second, and Rex chanced a peek between his giant fingers, starting.

"Six! She's on the run!"

She was charging up Main Street, actually, with some kind of ray-gun in tow. When Miss Muffet looked behind her to see Rex on her tail, she tossed some old-school smoke bombs his way. They detonated with ear-splitting bangs. Rex inhaled a lung-full of smoke and gagged, tripping over his own feet and landing face-first in crumbling concrete.

_"Rex? You okay?"_

Rex sat up and spat rocks out of his mouth. "Totally not enjoying this curds and whey junk." A second later, the Slam Canon bloomed out of his arm and crunched into the road. "_Hasta la vista!"_

_Fwoom_!

The compacted asphalt hit right behind Miss Muffet, and she stumbled, dropping her ray gun against the road, where it fizzed and died.

"Blast!" she looked up angrily, only to find Rex standing above her with his Block Party Gauntlets aglow.

"Whoa. Flimsy gun. Try to stay put this time, okay?" A large blue dome spread over her, making it impossible for her to stand, glowing with omega-nanite energy. She flinched away from it as if she thought it would hurt her.

"You won't get away with this, you EVO scum!"

Rex grinned, incredulous. "_Cómo_? Lady, that's my line. You can't just drive around in the creepo-mobile, steal cash, and think you won't get busted. Which you have, courtesy of me."

"You're just as selfish and power-hungry as the rest," she exclaimed. From her pocket, she pulled out something disturbingly familiar. "And it's gonna be the death of you."

_"Rex? Holiday says she's picked up on an-"_

"BOMB!" Rex shouted, diving backwards just as she thumbed the switch.

For a second, nothing happened, and Rex felt a little stupid.

"Lady, I swear-"

* * *

"-I'm gonna knock your block off," Rex mumbled. Blinked. He was looking right into the light of bright fluorescents.

"He's rebooted," said a voice to his right. Rex rolled his head on the hard surface where he lie and made out the fuzzy outline of a tall man with spiky black hair. "All major functions are back online. Rex? How are you feeling, _mijo?_"

"Ugh. _César? Qué pasó?"_

"An electromagnetic pulse. The nice lady with the piercings had a small-scale emitter with her, designed to wipe all data from her transport. But it messed with your nanites as well."

"So it wasn't a bomb?"

"Fortunately not."

"At least my memory's still there." Groaning, Rex sat up on the table. "Ugh, I feel like I was fired out of my Slam Cannon. Wait- wipe data from her transport? What kind of data?"

César smiled, lines deepening around his eyes. "An excellent question. Unfortunately, the EMP did it's job, but we're holding the lady for questioning. I believe Agent Six is speaking with her now."

"Thanks César. I'll just-"

His brother had to catch him when Rex tried to stand from the table.

"You're very weak, Rex. Your nanites are still low, and they're trying to fix a lot of the damage done to you after the blast."

César paused. " Also, I think you caught a bug."

"Pfft- César, the Great and Totally Awesome Rex Salazar does not get sick. I haven't been sick since before the Nanite Event..." It probably would have sounded more convincing if his arms weren't dangling at his sides, and his face wasn't hanging over his brother's shoulder.

"I know. But in the brief window when your Omega nanite was trying to repopulate your body's regular nanite levels, you caught a virus. It should be cleared up within twenty-four hours."

"Uh? Whuh?_ Twenty-four hours?"_ Rex sat back on the table and covered his eyes with one hand. "How am I supposed to help figure out what Miss Muffet was up to if I-"

A wave of dizziness stopped him from speaking further. He rode on it, feeling the room spin slowly to the right, and the cold sweat breaking out on the small of his back.

César seemed to understand, too, because he didn't say anything more than, "Resting is the best way to get better. And you can rest better in your own room. Well," he amended, " the room that you share with the talking chimpanzee."

"Can't I stay with you?" A dim memory of sitting bundled beside his brother, watching old recorded cartoons on VHS rose in his mind, along with the face of his mother. She didn't have make-up on his memory. And she was wearing a red college t-shirt. Taking a day off, Rex guessed, to take care of him.

"No can do, little brother. My work lately has been sending me around in the field. You need to stay put."

The door opened, revealing a pretty brunette woman in a labcoat. César smiled. "Besides, Dr. Holiday is going to help you get to your room."

"Dr. Holiday?" Rex grumbled, turning a little red. "That's okay. I'll just crawl."

"Don't be stupid," Dr. Holiday said. She heaved Rex up from the table and put one of his arms around her shoulders. "Bobo has already cleaned your room. I've ordered Providence to keep traffic in the hallway to a minimum. I don't want anything disturbing you while you're catching up on rest. And I'm going to the cafeteria right after this to get something rich in vitamin c so that we can beat this virus the old-fashioned way. I'm sorry you're sick, Rex, but this is going to be a great opportunity for me to study your natural immune system in action!"

Rex craned his head backwards, seeking help, but César was already turned back to his work, his shoulders quivering with laughter.

* * *

"Phenomenal cosmic power: itty bitty living space."

"Hey, kid. Way I see it, yous got it easy," grumbled Bobo Haha from his bunk. His fez was tipped down over his one good eye, his hairy arms crossed tightly over his chest. Bobo was preparing for his daily power nap. "Us chimps get no such respect. It's barred cages and bellhop costumes day-in and day-out. We ain't given any slack for the sniffles."

Rex collapsed onto the bottom bunk, mooshing his face deep into his pillow. It smelled like bananas.

"Actually," said Dr. Holiday, "what Rex has is a moderate form of influenza. Usually we inoculate our agents from the worst diseases, but Rex's nanites work better than any shot can."

"Flu, huh?" Bobo sat up and grabbed his pillow with one foot. "I ain't riskin' it, then. Chimps are too close to humans. I might catch it. Good luck, partner." He saluted Rex's crumpled form and knuckled from the room. Dr. Holiday watched him leave, a little contrite.

"Maybe it's for the best that you don't have as many people around," she said.

Rex hummed into his pillow, already half asleep. Something tugged on his boot, and then his foot was suddenly free, and a little cold. He curled up on himself as the second boot vanished.

"Here you go."

His goggles were pulled gently from his head, without catching on his hair. The warm weight of a comforter settled over him. A soft hand on his forehead.

"Go to sleep, Rex. I'll check on you in a little while."

* * *

Agent Six corrected his shades and checked a green suit-pocket for his communicator.

No calls. What was Holiday doing?

Tabitha Muff, or "Miss Muffet" as Rex liked to call her for some reason, wasn't the hardest person to break. The trick was to break lots of people over the course of your life. That way, when you got to an ex-kindergarten teacher who hated EVO's like Rex hated French class, that ex-kindergarten teacher would be routine.

Which she was.

"And you're certain that your weaponry appeared through a... red, spinning splotch in the air?"

"Yes!" cried Muff. "Yes, I swear! Don't let the EVO's take me away, sir! We can't let them rise back to power!"

"Were you given instructions to use these weapons?" Six continued.

"No, they were just sort of... there. And I knew I could put them to good use."

Six nodded. "It was brave of you to use them."

"What happens to me doesn't matter. We just have to be ready."

She was folded over the table, pierced face in her hands. Her cuffs glowed a faint blue, and as she sniffed heavily, fiddling with them, Six kept the corners of his mouth perfectly straight. If she knew Rex had built her confines, after all, she might not behave as well. He was still trying to control the beating of his heart, which was almost fifty percent faster than usual. All of his body, actually, was still quietly screaming at him. Sometimes things like this happened The best that Providence's scientists could explain it was that, while his mind had lost six years, his body hadn't.

Finding Rex had been easy; he was in the center of a glowing field of raging, deactivating nanites. Everything in the immediate area, all the tech, was dead. Muff had been so startled by Rex, that she hadn't run from where he had trapped her. Instead, she stared, and Six felt his body move straight to the kid.

The air had been thick with dead nanites, like a dust cloud. More than just the nanite population of the air- Rex must have thrown up some kind of shield before the emitter went off. They trickled down now, getting in Six's hair. Fogging up his shades. He reached into the falling cloud and gripped Rex's shoulder, pulling him up so that he was sitting against Six's side.

"Rex. Rex!"

"So he _is _a machine," Muff had said. "He's not even human."

_All the tech was dead._

Six had paused. He had shoved his ear against Rex's red jacket and listened for the organic, nearly hitting something like hysteria when the heart was pumping and the lungs were bellowing up and down.

Six tried not to think about it now, with Muff at the table and Rex in Holiday's care. He liked to believe that, even with the extra six years, he would have stayed here finished the job before pursuing personal agendas.

"Ms. Muff," Six continued, "please tell me about the EVO who killed your grand-daughter."

Muff jerked. In a second, she was fierce again. All her piercings reflected the lights on the cuffs and the ceiling bulb, her white teeth bared. "I've got nothing to say about that monster. Nothing."

"But you were the one to track it down," Six said. "Providence sent you an official statement of thanks for your services. That was four years ago. Since then, you'd fallen off the radar. Why surface now? Didn't you want a global cure?"

"Cure," she said, strained. "Cure! Have you really fallen for that?"

"I saw it personally," Six assured her.

"I'm not going to fall for it. We thought we were safe before. We thought everything was fine-!"

Muff bowed over the table. Something wet hit the surface.

"Don't be so comfortable, Agent. Something can _always_ go wrong."

Six looked at her, feeling an unease deep in his gut. By the time he saw the blood on her lips, she was already convulsing in the chair.

* * *

"What happened?" White Knight demanded, his pale face filling the large screen.

Six looked at the autopsy notes dispassionately. "Muff had a stud in her tongue containing mitygen. It's highly toxic, even with a smaller dose than she took."

"Suicide?" Knight said. "Did we learn anything from her?"

"Breach was the one who got the weapons, which mean's she's still active somewhere. She missed the Cure."

"Her and the rest of the Van Kleiss gang, I'm guessing."

"It's a safe assumption."

White Knight sighed deeply, shaking his head. "I hate the ones who go that way. But I guess, after you lose your kid..."

"It would change everything."

The two were silent. Six's fingers twitched beside his pocket.

"Speaking of kids," Knight said, pouring himself a glass of milk from a purified bottle. "Don't you have one of your own that you're supposed to be checking in on? I hear he's got two mad scientists watching him right now."

Six crooked an eyebrow. "I'll send you the findings on Breach when I'm done here."

"See that you do."

The screen blanked out, but Six was already out of the door and moving down the hall.

* * *

Knock out gas gave him weird dreams.

Apparently, influenza gave him _weirder_ dreams.

He was a little toy robot in his dream, and César, Dr. Holiday, and some kind of yeti were all passing him back and forth like a trading card that no one really wanted. Except that at one point, he actually was a trading card, and Bobo showed up in a bell-hop suit just to rip him in half. One of his stats read: Prone to being torn in two pieces and then stomped on.

So he waited to be stomped on, but no one bothered and the wind just sort of carried him away.

It totally sucked.

But then a light was shining in his eyes and he blearily made out the forms of a man and woman, talking in warbling words that walked up the walls and wandered into his ears.

"_Rex? caaaaaaaanuuuuuu earmi?"_

"_M__amá?_" he muttered. "_Papi_?"

"The fever hit him hard," said the woman.

A cool hand on his forehead. Rex moaned. Tried to claw out of his trappings, panicking.

"Rex, you're safe..."

"Rex, _está seguro_," said the man. "_Duérmete_."

Rex didn't feel very safe. Or ready to sleep. He tried to focus on his face, but something covered the man's eyes, reflecting squares of green. "_Estoy en casa? Está todo bien?"_

_"Sí, todo está bien. Ahora vuelve a dormir."_

Rex was already sinking back onto the pillows. His breathing slowing. He felt too warm, cold in his gut. But he was so tired...

"Thank god for freshman Spanish, huh?" the woman asked the man, and Rex could hear them standing, moving to the door.

"My... line of work required some fluency."

"Ah." The lights clicked off. The woman's voice was soft, "Sleep tight, Rex."

And until the attack, that's exactly what Rex did.

* * *

**A/N: My first "Generator Rex" fic! I had no clue that this show existed until a little while ago, when I was scrolling through Netflix. So, of course, I watched all three seasons like a total TV junkie and wanted _more!_ So here's this fic, to fill the hole that the lack of season four has given me.**

**I included a lot of Spanish into this chapter, mostly because I'm studying it right now, and I have a headcanon where Rex reverts to Spanish whenever he's sick. I also love how César calls Rex "mijo" in the show. He's such a sweet, if odd, big brother.**

**Hope you enjoyed!**

**-VICTORYCRUSH**

SPANISH:

"_Cómo?"- "Excuse me?" (in this context)_

_"__Qué pasó"- "What happened?"_

___"__Duérmete"- "Go to sleep."_

_"Estoy en casa? Esta todo bien?"- "Am I at home? Is everything okay?"_

_"Sí, todo está bien. Ahora vuelve a dormir."- "Yes, everything is fine. Go back to sleep."_


End file.
